Saturday, 12 January 2013

Book’s Purpose

I have just finished reading a book called Church Growth in
Britain[1], which may seem a strange title given the church in the UK has been in persistent
decline since the 1950s, both in membership and attendance. The trouble with
the national church figures is they aggregate a wide variety of churches with
different growth and decline profiles. Yes the majority are in decline and this
dominates the figures, but it also hides the fact that there are a sizable
number of congregations and church movements that are seeing continued growth.
That is the purpose of the book to highlight the numerous examples of growth
and try to explain why they are happening. As such a very encouraging book
telling a story that needs to be told.

Book’s Theses

The thesis of the book is summed up on p253 “the notion that
all British churches are in inexorable decline is a myth”. There is also a running sub-thesis that
the secularisation hypothesis has serious flaws with regard to British
churches. The secularisation hypothesis states that as societies become more
advanced they become less religious both in participation by people, and in the
connection between religious and non-religious institutions. Many American
sociologists have rejected the hypothesis for the USA but claim it is still
relevant in Europe because the latter has national established churches and
thus weaker competition between churches. The book defends its two theses
through a series of articles from a variety of authors covering Black Majority
churches, New churches, cathedrals and regional variations. There is ample
evidence that there are many growing churches in the UK, and that the country
is becoming more like the USA’s market economy in religion, than Europe’s
secularisation through the dominance of established churches. I.e. church participation is a form of
religious consumption rather than the older form of religious obligation.

Social or Spiritual?

The book starts good, but quickly falls into sociological
perspectives on church growth. I wondered if this was to encourage its audience
or to satisfy an academic referee in sociology? At times I wondered if anyone would
admit that they believed in what churches do let alone believe in God. It
came across as too secular in its viewpoint, rather ironic considering its
disapproval of the secularisation hypothesis! I understand the need for academic
peer review, but it is still possible to let people know you look to the God of
the Bible. In my first paper on mathematical modelling of church growth in
amongst all the maths and sociology references I gave two references to sermons
by Dr Martyn Lloyd-Jones and thus referred to revival and the work of the
Spirit as part of the evidence in model construction. It is possible to have
academic and spiritual integrity simultaneously!

Church Decline

The book is rescued from a secular perspective by George
Lings who, in plain English, rather than academic jargon, ignored the currently
politically correct sociological theories of religion and identifies two key hindrances
to mission, p167, that the church:

assumes all people (in the UK) are Christians
and thus doubts such people need rescuing, saving and changing by Christ;

finds enthusiasm and evangelism disagreeable
preferring a “back to church” approach as a sufficient strategy.

To me these are also causes of church decline, because they
lead to insufficient growth to counter normal losses. These are the ones built
in to the limited enthusiasm model, my main model of church growth. More
spiritual insights like these, rather than the sociological ones would have improved
the book’s case enormously. This
to me was the most informative and positive statement in the book and the
various examples of growth given elsewhere in the book illustrate it well.

Migration and Mobility

Another positive statement of the book is that church growth
is higher where migration and mobility are higher. The church growth models
predict this, though it must be said these are the same results that say that
epidemics are larger when populations move around more. This is not an original
result of mine, but it does hold true for churches as well. For churches to grow they need volatile
networks among people. Many churches decline simply because they do not have
enough contact with the community, the networks remain static. Widen the
susceptible pool and decline can be turned into revival growth. Migration does this a treat, but in its
absence church people need to internally “migrate” within their own
communities, changing their friendship networks. The resulting growth would be
similar to that of churches in city centres and among immigrant communities

Encouragement?

I guess the main conclusion of the book is that the many
growing congregations give hope for the future. I am afraid I have to be more
hesitant here as this does not necessarily follow. Although stories of growing
congregations are encouraging, they have always been there in each decade of
the last century (and this), but they have never led to the re-growth of the
church nationally. Aggregation is brutal. Although there are growing
congregations, they are considerably outweighed by the much larger number of
declining ones. The growing ones do not grow indefinitely. Either they plateau,
remaining large and lively but no longer contributing to national church
growth, or they join the ranks of declining ones. In subsequent decades it is
then other congregations that become growing ones, but again not enough of
them. Thus although it looks very encouraging to see many growing
congregations, unless sustained, and replicated in other congregations, it will
not on its own lead to national church growth.

Revival

One feature of the book did however really frustrate me; I
had to wait to p137 before I saw the first mention of revival! Even then it was
with reference to Nigeria. It was here that gave the only reference to baptism
with the Spirit. It left me wondering does anyone believe in revival anymore?
Does anyone believe that church growth comes through frequent outpourings of
the Holy Spirit on the church? That has to be left to another blog!

Reference

[1] Church Growth in Britain: 1980 to the Present, David Goodhew, 2012, Ashgate Publishing.